This is the end that brings the future
by Virgin in a brothel
Summary: "I could hardly leave without saying goodbye, and once is never enough." Takes place during Forest of the Dead, contains spoilers for S4-6.


**Just a little slightly introspective one shot, takes place in **_**Forest of the Dead**_**. It breaks my heart, but I own nothing but these words...**

Welcoming death is no penitence for a life endured. Sometimes it is a freedom. She has felt the stab of her loss that is one day in the future to become his gain, and she welcomes it. For she knew now that their romance was mortal; it had to be so, for without this end there would be no beginning; and this beginning is not something she could sacrifice for her survival.

She had had an extraordinary life by all accounts, and had gained as many names from it as had her dear Doctor before her; but, today as she dies she is not Melody Pond, or Mels, or River Song, or; Professor River Song she is the Doctor's Wife and she'd be damned if he'd never get to live the story of how she became so.

Yet, as he lay without conscious thought, his unfamiliar face slumped against his captured wrist, she can't help but feel a slight unwillingness to leave. He's not _her _Doctor yet, but one day he will be; she knows that his encounters with her will be instrumental in the shaping of the man he is to become. However, she's not conceited enough to think that her Doctor cannot live without her; in fact she's quite sure that neither of them _need_ one another. Her unwillingness to leave a relationship that although orchestrated by the universes own manipulation of fate, fortune, and misfortune, is less about mutual _need, _and more about mutual _choice_. You see, both parties had chosen their path. Neither had been forced to love one another, indeed from a sensible perspective it should perhaps be perceived that circumstantially they should loathe one another, as a third party had intended. They, against all odds, had found love with one another that at times was so incandescently bright it hurt, and that is what she was reluctant to surrender.

Leaving this relationship, leaving her darling Doctor was a sacrifice that she would not be averted from; but, she felt the pang of heartbreak before the deed had even been done; perhaps in anticipation for she knew that once dead, it may never come.

She had set the countdown to her end, and his beginning.

The tick of the clock has resigned her to her destiny and she had decided that she would not hold back. There was a sick sort of symmetry in their romance full of death and destruction that had gone some way into coercing her into this; she saw the past, present, and future in a haze of golden lines, time etched behind her eyelids and she saw where her path with the Doctor began and ended. She knew that this is where she ends.

Her resignation and determination was such that she barely looked up when a flash of blue light erupted in the corner of her eye.

The Doctor stumbled slightly in the blue haze left by disturbed protons in the air; the vortex manipulator was a little damaged but he had had to make this trip. He rushed to his wife's side where she sat bathed in a near ethereal light from the glow of a monitor, a perverse crown upon her lap, waiting to be placed upon her wild curls, waiting to take her life. She was fiddling with wires, eyes averted from him though she knew he was there. He rushed forth in frenzy until he reached her throne where he dropped to his knees, placing his hands upon hers.

"You shouldn't be here." Her voice didn't waver, and her eyes never met his.

"I know." He gripped her still wandering hands a little tighter.

She continued in the same steady tone, "You can't stop this."

He sounded hoarse, as though he'd been crying. "I know."

At that her gaze met his, and part of her resolve crumbled, she ran a hand through his brown locks and sighed. He rose from his knees, and she lay the crown aside; he pulled her up to stand with him, eyes locked together, all of time and space running through and between them. He whispered to her in Gallifreyan, unintelligible to any outsider, and she in return flung her arms around his neck. Her head buried into his shoulder, tears soaking into his tweed jacket.

"This is the end for both of us." He said solemnly. His hand caressing her cheek. "I'm eleven-hundred and three."

She clung to him a little tighter.

He continued, "I could hardly leave without saying goodbye, and once is never enough."

She murmured into his neck, "Darillium?"

She felt him nod, "It was beautiful."

She smiled against him, and he returned it willingly. "You were beautiful." He took her by her shoulders and pulled her back until he could see her face, "River Song, you are beautiful."

She grabbed the lapels of his jacket and tugged him towards her until her lips collided with his. This, their last kiss; full of passion, love and devotion. Their tears mingling together, hands in hair, tugging and pulling until neither knew whose hands were whose. In the midst of this the Doctor never saw her hand move nimbly to his wrist and reset the co-ordinates; he never felt her press the transportation button.

River Song pulled away with as much force and reluctance as she could muster before her Doctor disappeared in a flash of light, her last words lingering in the vortex, "Good bye, my love."

Minutes later as she placed the crown upon her head, she felt no fear; for she had lived a life against all odds, had loved a good man and been loved in return. This was where it all began; and in her head she cried out in her loves memory ... 'Geronimo.'

_**As always, reviews are very much appreciated...**_


End file.
